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Yes I am mad, but I prefer the term EVIL GENIUS!!!

Anyway sorry for my horrible grammar, and spelling, and punctuation.

What I meant to say was you know how illios was a large cryogenic facility?

And it only ran out of power because there were too many people there for it to sustain for a long time?

Well if only one person who had a lot of resources built another facility just for him/herself, it would last much longer because only he/she is using it.
And then Shepard discovers it.

But what the hell would the point of that one person be?

-_- think Cheese.......If there was at least ONE prothean.....think of the almost limitless ways they could turn the story.....the alliance could try to "interogate" him for more infor and tecnology and there could be sympathizers causing a war within civilization......or there could be more Cerberus Cells that want to disect him....or there could be just people who want him dead for some slowed reason.....plus he could add more info to you on the Reapers....I mean....He kinda freaking survived their Genocide of the Protheans.

That explanation didn't even make sense in the first place. A selfish billionaire saving only himself from galactic genocide, knowing that he would be the ONLY survivor of his race and wouldn't be able to rebuild?

A single Prothean wouldn't be of any story value, it would be slowed.

Okay Okay then what about if he was traveling and maybe his ship engines failed and he turned out to crash on a abandoned planet......and the same story with Ilos....the AI killed off all the lesser workers until only he was left.....ehh....what about that.

Maddest props to anti-mag for writing an honest review and mini-props to others for not raging. Metallifan gave up the alien language point too easily, however. That was stupid-silly in KotOR and pretty hypocritically done. Aliens not in your party all say "bee-boo-bee-boh-bah-bee-boo" while those in the party speak fluent English . . . so that the ones in your party can develop as characters. Meanwhile, the rest of the non-human galaxy sounds slowed and pretty much the same after a while. It was done away with in ME to good effect. The fact that Batarians speak English doesn't make their xenophobia less believable, for example.

That said, I think anti-mag comes up with the right verdict (i.e., Mass Effect moar leik Over React amirite?) for some weak reasons. The fact that none of the locations were even slightly interesting much less awe-inspiring or even thought-provoking (Geth base, anyone?) didn't come up in his review, for example. And then there's the total lack of meaningful character development in ME2. (Garrus prefers to do all his growing and maturing between games, I guess.) Yeah, the main story was unfulfilling garbage that amounted to a much too long commercial for ME3 but I could have gotten something out of it if the characters had more than one dimension. And the much-vaunted moral tensions that BioWare scripts are totally bogus. How is it that Tali's prejudice against the Geth (one of the greatest set-ups ME2 inherited from ME1) pretty well evaporates in the face of Shepherd's bland rationalizations? All of the interactions work this way. So lame.

The take home message is that ME2 turned out to be a mediocre sales pitch for ME3. And now I don't know if I really care about playing ME3 so I guess that backfired, too. Dragon Age, ME2 . . . that's two strikes, BioWare. (Although in all honesty comparing ME2 to Dragon Age is like comparing George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler.) I'm not sure I want to pay you to strike out yet again.

Okay Okay so what you people continually don't bring up(well thus far I haven't seen it) dude its the friggin universe with MANY MANY different races.... some races have their own languages yes but which is the Asari's, Humans, Voltris(whatever the slowed tan aliens are called), and a few more that I can't name all have mouths.....The asari's are trying to bring all races under a single banner to a sort and you kinda can't live together if every one speaks a different language! Aliens like the big four-legged things that say expressions all talk through body motions that no other race can understand. Its obvious that the races would find a single language that everyone has to learn and they just decided the language to be human tongue.....although point well taken with the batarians......they should speak their own language because of the as you said Xenophobia.

I know i didn't cover all the points so if you see something I missed tell me so I can clarify. Thanks.

Uhhhh, I said that it was preferable that they all speak English.

Sorry if I "attacked" you with that....I mean no offense its just I've seen long lines of posts where people were talking about how slowed the aliens were for not using their language and I just saw how you started talking about the aliens and their language and I don't think at the moment I was fully Into the paragraph so I apologize greatly to you.

No prob.

Manchu wrote: (Although in all honesty comparing ME2 to Dragon Age is like comparing George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler.) I'm not sure I want to pay you to strike out yet again.

I came to the inverse conclusion. I was okay with Dragon Age; disappointed but okay. The Dwarven city really won me over.

I raged at ME2; especially because there was so much wasted potential. It was half-way to being great, and therefore much worse than something which misses completely.

Cheese Elemental wrote:That explanation didn't even make sense in the first place. A selfish billionaire saving only himself from galactic genocide, knowing that he would be the ONLY survivor of his race and wouldn't be able to rebuild?

A single Prothean wouldn't be of any story value, it would be slowed.

He'selfish DUH

Plus the prothan would be a good squadmate.

Who said they're speaking English? They speak just as much "English" as Luke Skywalker does. We don't know what the galactic trade language is. Maybe they all just use a Babelfish. ^^

Slick Psychic wrote:
Plus the prothan would be a good squadmate.

Like I said before: If the Protheans look like those statues on Ilos (which they probably do), then they're obviously unsuited to combat and there isn't any evidence of them being powerful biotics.

Every race has thier own class of warriors. No exceptions.

Emperors Faithful wrote:Every race has thier own class of warriors. No exceptions.

Volus. They get the Turians to fight for them.

On a bigger picture yes. But two things.

1) When it was just Volus vs Volus (before they came across Citadel races) you can better that there were Volus warriors...with athsmatic problems.

2) Protheans didn't seem to have any such auxiliary races to call upon to fight for them.

Talk to the Volus Ambassador in ME1, he tells you that the clans have always been about economics. Even if they did go to war with each other, they'd have their own way of fighting, which wouldn't compare to anything other species could so.

Maybe the Protheans didn't go to war. They certainly didn't have the capabilities to fight the Reapers.

Manchu wrote:Maddest props to anti-mag for writing an honest review.

Cheers Manchu.

You raised a good point with the language, and it was something I missed in terms of building relations with characters. Although I will say that the character development in ME2 was mainly a moot point, and revolved around running a brief mission rather than complex conversational choices.

I loved Dragon Age. I feel it is the opposite of ME2 in many ways, and all the better for it. I see DA as a game where an enoromous amont of time was invested in the plot, the characterization, and the development of your chosen role. The graphics were sub par, but this hid a fantastically rich game which made the comparison with ME2 all the more apparent. I was putting a lot of hope on ME2 being similar to DA, only with tremendous graphics and even more of a story. In the end I felt utterly deflated.

I would advise everyone who hasn't played these titles to choose the rough diamond that is DA; as you will see what a modern day RPG is capable of.

I'm more with Manchu when it comes to Dragon Age. I don't think it's as bad as he claims, but the combat is too similar to WoW and it's really strange having the KOTOR-style dialogue. All the conversations sound so one-sided and awkward.

And I don't like how you have to constantly pursue better gear. It's too reminiscent of MMOs. Removing that kind of inventory from ME was a great idea.

Cheese Elemental wrote:I'm more with Manchu when it comes to Dragon Age. I don't think it's as bad as he claims, but the combat is too similar to WoW and it's really strange having the KOTOR-style dialogue. All the conversations sound so one-sided and awkward.

And I don't like how you have to constantly pursue better gear. It's too reminiscent of MMOs. Removing that kind of inventory from ME was a great idea.

Whilst the 'silent response' method of KOTOR and DA lacks a bit of realism, I don't think ME2 trumps it. Sheppard has few conversational responses as the conversations in ME2 are limited themselves. Having Sheppards ''What can you tell me about...'' or ''I'm looking for...'' helps realize the concept of conversation, it is the perfect demonstration of what I see as ME2's main trait; that of style over substance.

I think DA succeeded in this sense, as it didn't try to glitz everything up, but gave more to the thinkers out there. I think ME2 is a perfect game for a casual RPG player, but DA impressed me more with its massive depth, playing time, and excellent sense of humour.

The combat needs work, admittedly. I've never played WoW but from my friends descriptions and the footage of it I've seen it looks very bland. I may be biased because I play Eve Online. But if the combat animation and lack of a players dialogue are the main problems of DA, I think it sells itself. The branching system of weapons keeps things fresh, makes you feel like your powers are expanding, give the player something to aim for and really specialize in. ME2 in this sense was very poor; I expected there to be advanced markets selling all sorts of wild gear, and yet I finished the game with the two weapons I found in the first hour. If even a game as old as the original KOTOR can trump Mass Effect in that sense, that is a problem.

Well, think about it. On a modern battlefield, are you really going to discriminate between different kevlar vests if they're both just as efficient as each other? It was slowed how in ME1 there were so many different kinds of armour and weapons and ten tiers for every single one (except the very rare gear like Colossus armour and Spectre weapons). That kind of thing fits Diablo better.

As for the dialogue, did you even bother with things like persuade and intimidate in ME2? Some of Shepard's lines are fantastic; my personal favourite was intimidating the Quarian admirals. If you're just blazing through conversations without expanding them, then of course they're dull.

Cheese Elemental wrote:

Slick Psychic wrote:
Plus the prothan would be a good squadmate.

Like I said before: If the Protheans look like those statues on Ilos (which they probably do), then they're obviously unsuited to combat and there isn't any evidence of them being powerful biotics.

Um the collectors were once prothian so they have a resemblance to the originals.

EDI states that they aren't Protheans anymore. Their architecture is vastly different from the 'insect hive' style of the Collectors, clearly indicating that they're nothing like they used to be, physically or otherwise.

Anung Un Rama wrote:Who said they're speaking English? They speak just as much "English" as Luke Skywalker does. We don't know what the galactic trade language is. Maybe they all just use a Babelfish. ^^

There not all speaking english. All people you talk to have unviersal translaters. Either pda like, ear insert or subdermal implants. So you hear them in you language but they hear you in what ever language there speaking

garret wrote:

Anung Un Rama wrote:Who said they're speaking English? They speak just as much "English" as Luke Skywalker does. We don't know what the galactic trade language is. Maybe they all just use a Babelfish. ^^

There not all speaking english. All people you talk to have unviersal translaters. Either pda like, ear insert or subdermal implants. So you hear them in you language but they hear you in what ever language there speaking

That's what I meant. That was one the issues Anti-Mag brought up, but it didn't bother me, because quite frankly, how often do you see a science-fiction story where aliens speak a different language than the rest.

Cheese Elemental wrote:EDI states that they aren't Protheans anymore. Their architecture is vastly different from the 'insect hive' style of the Collectors, clearly indicating that they're nothing like they used to be, physically or otherwise.

Think about the husks. They are basically in the same situation I’m pretty sure they had their genes spliced as well and had machinery added to them.

‘Sides the statues in the citadel; they might be the anatomy of the race that came before even the prothans.

Cheese Elemental wrote:Well, think about it. On a modern battlefield, are you really going to discriminate between different kevlar vests if they're both just as efficient as each other? It was slowed how in ME1 there were so many different kinds of armour and weapons and ten tiers for every single one (except the very rare gear like Colossus armour and Spectre weapons). That kind of thing fits Diablo better.

As for the dialogue, did you even bother with things like persuade and intimidate in ME2? Some of Shepard's lines are fantastic; my personal favourite was intimidating the Quarian admirals. If you're just blazing through conversations without expanding them, then of course they're dull.

No, I went all out renegade for all of my conversation choices, aside from when I was seducing my crew. Gotta cover all of the bases

Well, it's a matter of preference for the weapons, language and gear. I don't think we'll agree on it, so I wont drag it out. Concerning the gear; whilst it's a bit strange to assume that a character in DA can lug around an arsenal of swords etc, the evolving weapons and armour you recieve give you small goals to aim toward, and reward the player. Concerning this latest installment of ME, I can speculate that in ME3 you'll have one weapon which you can tweak to your liking.

Oh, and for all the good voicewrok that ME2 had, Sheppard came out with some awful lines too!

Maybe, but some of them were quite bad ass.
"You're working to hard." cracks me up every time.

Anti-Mag wrote: Concerning this latest installment of ME, I can speculate that in ME3 you'll have one weapon which you can tweak to your liking.

Nonsense. BioWare aren't stupid, they've got no reason to remove pistols, assault rifles, snipers, shotguns and heavies and replace them with one weapon. That wouldn't make any sense.

Anti-Mag wrote:Oh, and for all the good voicewrok that ME2 had, Sheppard came out with some awful lines too!

Better than having no lines at all like the DA main character.